Fox News Cracks Down a YouTube Channel

For Fox News, its was time to take down News1News, a YouTube channel syndicating clips from Fox News – specifically segments that attact the Liberal Party. Although not all YouTube Channels who are leaning to the left were closed down, shutting down News1News was enough to earn the ire of the left-leaning political bloggers.News1News happens to be the most popular YouTube channel among political bloggers. Created by a certain Dr. John of Washington, News1News captures and uploads Fox News segments. And since this is done without the permission of Fox News, it is but logical that Fox News can claim its rights on the footages.

Fox sent 150 DMCA takedown notices until YouTube was forced to shut down the channel since it has a clear policy on “3-strike” copyright violations. Of course political bloggers who comment on the YouTube videos as well as those who use it as a central point in their blog posts got mad and are now attacking Fox News. This group were advocating that it was an abuse of the DMCA rule.

News1News is currently up on a temporary site. Until when it will be there remains to be unanswered.

The question is, was Fox News just exercising its DMCA rights? Or was there any political motive behind this?

Arnold Zafra is a freelance blogger/writer from Manila. He believes that 2010 will be the year of the ebook readers so he created a new blog dedicated to the upcoming Asus Eee Reader. You can follow him on Twitter.